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Elon Musk Claims U.S. Approval for World’s Longest Tunnel (hyperloop stuff)

P

ponpo

( ≖‿≖)
https://www.wired.com/story/hyperloop-one-test-pod-video/

THE FUTURE SOUNDS a bit like a witch crying over a dead cat. That spooky wail is the sound hyperloop makes—at least, the version of the high-speed transportation system designed by Hyperloop One, which just took a big stride toward the day it flings you between cities in near-vacuum tubes.

The Los Angeles company leading the race to fulfill Elon Musk’s dream of tubular transit tested its pod for the first time last weekend. That pod is 28 feet long and made of aluminum and carbon fiber. It looks a bit like a bus with a beak.

A fast bus with a beak. Once loaded into a 1,600-foot-long concrete tube in the Nevada desert, the pod hit 192 mph in about 5 seconds, using an electric propulsion system producing more than 3,000 horsepower. As the pod accelerated through the tube 11 feet in diameter, the 16 wheels retracted as magnetic levitation took over. Mag-lev—used by high-speed trains in Japan and elsewhere—reduces drag and the energy required to achieve near-supersonic speeds. It helps, too, that Hyperloop One’s engineers also pumped nearly all the air out of the tube, reducing air pressure to what you'd experience at an altitude of 200,000 feet.
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Video in the article.
 
A

aeolustl

Member
That proof of concept came way faster than I thought. I once thought we would never see anything close until 2020.

But still, there is a lot of problems need to solve, like turning, elevation, and stations. Also, it would be hard to keep a long tunnel under vacuum, right?
 
M

mcfrank

Member
ZoltanXerxes said:
A 220 mile vacuum tube with people traveling near the speed of sound is a really bad idea.
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4 bags of meat traveling in a steel box at 80 miles an hour 3 feet from another bag of meat traveling at 80 miles an hour who is driving while playing candy crush on their phone is also a really bad idea.
 
C

Crispy75

Member
aeolustl said:
That proof of concept came way faster than I thought. I once thought we would never see anything close until 2020.

But still, there is a lot of problems need to solve, like turning, elevation, and stations. Also, it would be hard to keep a long tunnel under vacuum, right?
Click to expand...

Doesn't have to be a vacuum, just low pressure. It's not the biggest showstopper.

Low throughput remins Hyperloop's key weakness. It's just not Mass enough to be Mass Transit.
 
H

Harp

Member
If the claims are true, and it has a high capacity. It should be a mix a of public, federal, funded. Of course if the price to ride it is reasonable. If it going to cost the same as it would to just fly. Put that money into plane technology
 
Evolved1

Evolved1

make sure the pudding isn't too soggy but that just ruins everything
Monkeyball said:
A tube with wings flying through the sky is a really bad idea.
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lol not nearly the same thing.

This idea is a catastrophe waiting to happen, if it even ever works... which seems doubtful given how many problems they still have to address just to build it. Despite what movies try to tell us, aircraft don't instantaneously crumple and fail catastrophically when they depressurize. Vacuum tubes do, when they fail. Worse than the planes in movies.
 
M

mcfrank

Member
Evolved1 said:
lol not nearly the same thing.

This idea is a catastrophe waiting to happen, if it even ever works... which seems doubtful given how many problems they still have to address just to build it. Despite what movies try to tell us, aircraft don't instantaneously crumple and fail catastrophically when they depressurize. Vacuum tubes do, when they fail. Worse than the planes in movies.
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30,000 people die driving in America every year. Basically, there is a 9/11 on the roads in America every month. Do you think the death toll from this will be higher or lower than that?
 
C

Crispy75

Member
Evolved1 said:
aircraft don't instantaneously crumple and fail catastrophically when they depressurize. Vacuum tubes do, when they fail. Worse than the planes in movies.
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Not if they're designed correctly they don't. Resisting 1atm of pressure is trivial. That's the equivalent of 10m underwater.

You might be thinking of popular science demonstrations of vaccum with soda cans, or accidents in which tanks designed for *compression* get inadvertently de-pressurised. In those cases, the failure is sudden and violent yes.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
This basically sounds like nonsense but Musk's whole empire has been built on doing things first, sometimes things that a lot of the conventional wisdom said wasn't possible.
 
S

Steejee

Member
aeolustl said:
That proof of concept came way faster than I thought. I once thought we would never see anything close until 2020.

But still, there is a lot of problems need to solve, like turning, elevation, and stations. Also, it would be hard to keep a long tunnel under vacuum, right?
Click to expand...

Yeah, lots of problems. Remember that the 'hyperloop' idea is not a new one, it's basically just an updated version of a 200 year old idea to do pneumatic transport, so there's a lot of things that have stopped it in the past that could still.

Also worth noting that Musk's grand plan hasn't had to deal with actually building a real system in the real world. It's one thing to do a demonstration tube in the desert, another to try to tunnel or build elevated tube somewhere urban.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
Steejee said:
Also worth noting that Musk's grand plan hasn't had to deal with actually building a real system in the real world. It's one thing to do a demonstration tube in the desert, another to try to tunnel or build elevated tube somewhere urban.
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Whilst this is undoubtedly true, it's also the only way it can ever happen. All infrastructure starts with small tests that gradually build to huge nationwide projects. So the fact that small tests are all we have isn't really indicative of much other than that it hasn't been done yet - which I think we all know.
 
D

Dingens

Member
mcfrank said:
30,000 people die driving in America every year. Basically, there is a 9/11 on the roads in America every month. Do you think the death toll from this will be higher or lower than that?
Click to expand...

hardly a viable comparison since more people die on normal roads in the US per capita than on the German autobahn... you know, that's the road without speed limits.
Americans are just shitty drivers (and having seen how some driving schools operate I'm not surprised).


The hyper loop has so many potential for catastrophe, I can't imagine finding a solution for every single one of them.
I'll stick to tube-free, vacuum free train, thanks
 
C

Chris R

Member
jellies_two said:
The team reinvented an electric train, and put it in a tube.

Sorry I am not seeing the tech breakthrough.
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In a partially evacuated tube that enables the train to run at nearly 4x the max speed currently achievable by regular electric trains.

So just an ultra-refined method of travel.
 
O

OrangeGrayBlue

Member
jellies_two said:
The team reinvented an electric train, and put it in a tube.

Sorry I am not seeing the tech breakthrough.
Click to expand...

If you don't see how the possibility of getting from DC to Manhattan or LA to SF in under 30 minutes is a tech breakthrough I don't know what to tell you. It doesn't matter if it's largely an amalgamation of pre-existing tech; the innovation is in using all of it for the unified purpose of transporting people more efficiently than any method available. Frankly I don't think anyone is dense enough to see what this could potentially become and not understand the excitement around it.

So, yeah, it's not a literal warp gate which is apparently your barometer for technical marvel, but your dismissiveness and condescension toward something that I'd have to imagine far outstrips any of your own accomplishments (or my own) reeks of arrogance.
 
V

Vinsanity.

Member
Wouldn’t the acceleration and speed be insanely uncomfortable as a passenger? Like would you even be able to lean forward or move at all against the g-forces? I know in some roller coasters I’ve been on I’m not able to push my head forward against the speed/acceleration...
 
K

KHarvey16

Member
Vinsanity. said:
Wouldn’t the acceleration and speed be insanely uncomfortable as a passenger? Like would you even be able to lean forward or move at all against the g-forces? I know in some roller coasters I’ve been on I’m not able to push my head forward against the speed/acceleration...
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Acceleration would be gradual. Passengers can't feel speed.
 
metareferential

metareferential

Member
Hermii said:
Honestly 20 billion sounds cheap for what you are getting here.
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That's really cheap for that lenght.

For perspective, the newest line in Switzerland, Alptransit, cost about as much (being admittedly far more difficult given the geology here), and it's way shorter and above all slower.

In one of his TED talks Musk explains how he could cut down costs dramatically: reduce the tunnel's diameter in half, and making tunnelling machines that simultaneously dig and reinforce, while doing so faster and harder.

It all sounds great, of course. A man can dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwLWfaAg-8
 
O

OrangeGrayBlue

Member
Vinsanity. said:
Wouldn’t the acceleration and speed be insanely uncomfortable as a passenger? Like would you even be able to lean forward or move at all against the g-forces? I know in some roller coasters I’ve been on I’m not able to push my head forward against the speed/acceleration...
Click to expand...

Once you've reached top speed you stop feeling the acceleration because... there is no more acceleration. And as long as it speeds up over the course of, say, two minutes, it won't be so intense that it would be bothersome. Musk explicitly stated that a passenger version wouldn't accelerate the way these test vehicles do.
 
P

phoisgood495

Member
Might just be the video, but looks very rickety at this test stage. Either way I really hope this comes to fruition, as it sounds incredible. Anything to move us away from the plane + car headache that is transportation in America would be beautiful.
 
W

Wads

Banned
I don't do well in small enclosed places....if this becomes a thing I hope it's not like a sardine can...
 
G

geomon

Member
ponpo said:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/902039243601485824

Neat.
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tumblr_inline_mzoggaXt3P1r4j8j1.gif
 
J

jellies_two

Member
Icyflamez96 said:
The speed should speak for itself here...
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It was 202mph - which for an electric train is kind of run of the mill?
I thought the point of a hyper loop was the vacuum, and suspended in way to minimise any movement. Otherwise it's just an electric car running on a straight track.

I see the tech breakthrough of a hyperloop idea (vacuum) but what I don't see is a team break through in trials that proves anything in this competition update.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
jellies_two said:
It was 202mph - which for an electric train is kind of run of the mill?
I thought the point of a hyper loop was the vacuum, and suspended in way to minimise any movement. Otherwise it's just an electric car running on a straight track.

I see the tech breakthrough of a hyperloop idea (vacuum) but what I don't see is a team break through in trials that proves anything in this competition update.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's really intended to - you don't get all the way to a final production model without testing it. It has to be iterative and that's what this is.
 
T

TarNaru33

Banned
F

Frankfurter

Member
Tbh I don't see how this is will not be extremely expensive compared to a regular train. That tunnel simply isn't gonna be built for free.
 
F

FreezeSSC

Member
jellies_two said:
It was 202mph - which for an electric train is kind of run of the mill?
I thought the point of a hyper loop was the vacuum, and suspended in way to minimise any movement. Otherwise it's just an electric car running on a straight track.

I see the tech breakthrough of a hyperloop idea (vacuum) but what I don't see is a team break through in trials that proves anything in this competition update.
Click to expand...

Isnt the top average speed they're shooting for 700mph?
 
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